New Belgium Abbey

One of the problems with rating sites is the herd mentality. Not only do average beers get pumped up by groupthink, but good beers get dissed. The best way to deal with that is to drink what you like and use the rating sites carefully (if at all).

I'm going to have that tattooed on my butt. Lucid defined.

Scott

I essentially use rating sites for 2 main things:

1 a place to keep track of my notes, the beers I've tried, etc. and get handy stats on them 2 read the forums

I've been a member of ratebeer for 5 years now and I just plain don't read most of the ratings nor do I check out the "top 50" and other lists. (and I really haven't done so for well over 3 years)

I know there are some beers there that get alot of hype and that can usually cause me to go check it out and see what the hype is about, but I'm fairly certain I don't let that groupthink influence my experience with the beer. I've gone against the grain many times. As I said, usually I don't even pay attention to how everyone else rates a beer. I just like the convenience of keep track of all my stuff. Writing things down and assigning some subjective scores has greatly improved my memory of the beers I've tried, and has also forced me to attend more closely to my experiences, which both improves my memory as well as refines my palate.

A third use for them is as a resources for what to look for when I visit a new geographic area (esp. with the distribution info at ratebeer) and also for good beer stores and bars with good selection (better than pubcrawler since its focused on places that focus only on good beer).

I find this stuff dangerously drinkable for the level of alcohol. It can catch up with you very quickly!

----------------------------------------------------- Pete Clouston Lawrence (KS) Brewers Guild

Yeah but, you and I are, obviosly, very responsible drinkers. ;^)

Best regards, Bill

And it might even be obvious.

Yes, other than as a list of what's out there the comparisons are questionable. I don't compare brews in my beer blog, just report what I saw and how I liked it. And frequently what I ate with it ;-)

No "me too" in the blog, everyone in the family has been through Bill Woodring's course for TAPNY judges, we brew, and we NEVER hesitate to disagree as we travel around the country doing tastings.

It helps to have a style book handy before offering an opinion, I think some people rate a beer purely on how they like it, without considering that it may be supposed to taste like that.

I had some StonE "Impreial Russian" Stout last night, 10.9%ABV! I haven't written a review yet, but no danger of guzzling that one, it took me about three hours to sip my way through 22oz.

Maybe, but there's nothing wrong with that. If you brew a beer that's supposed to taste bad, then it still tastes bad!

Beer rating sites are not beer judging sites. They're based on subjective preference with an eye towards informing the consumer about what they might like or not like. (this uses a narrow definition of the "consumer" though, being beergeeks rather than the average person off the street)

"Expletive Deleted" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@linc.cis.upenn.edu...

Don't agree. It depends a lot on the rater. I express my personal feelings very clearly in a rating, but the beer is weighed objectively, without prejudice. It can be surprising at times. Cheers, Joris

considering

No, nothing "wrong" with it per se, but...

My problem with purely hedonic rating is that it can penalize something that's simply unfamiliar. Tastes change with familiarity. Palates can be trained and honed. Initial impressions can seem foolish with time and experience.

Yes, I thought [] was a pretty decent guy at first.

God help me.

Sinner! Mention the [] One no more!

You're on your own on this one. A bottle of Old Nick or Lucifer might make it go easier, though.

Which means it's subjective in some cases. Perhaps even a lot of cases.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!

And others are purely subjective, even if they don't know.

The rating sites are fine if taken with the appropriate "grain of salt." The ones doing the rating and reviewing are self-selecting, and not a truly random sampling from the population. Keeping this in mind is not a bad thing.

"Jon Binkley" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Which is why a site like Ratebeer can come in handy. When I started beergeeking, I didn't like pilsners or helles or varied other styles. By being a constant part of a virtual community of beer geeks, it's encouraged me to broaden my horizons. At this point, I'm pretty much planning on bathing in Dominion Lager this summer, as I've developed a deep love of a good helles, and, on my recent trip to Tampa, I was overjoyed to discover Staropramen at the Beverage Castle near my folks' house.

Yes, the rating sites are very much slanted towards obnoxiously big beers or beer-of-the-moment trendiness (like last year's frickin' bourbon barrel craze), but that doesn't make the data completely invalid. Being aware of the prejudices of the majority of raters just means you need to take it all with a healthy grain of salt.

Agreed. I just have a reflexive reaction against people who say things like "this is the second best beer in the WORLD!!1!11!!" When questioned, they invariably cite some online random-yahoo web site.

Actually I don't think you're disagreeing with me, because you've basically stated my approach to beer rating. What I meant was that the sites are not "Homebrew competition, BJCP, or even GABF-esque" judging oriented. The poster I replied to essentially was complaining that some good beers are poorly rated even though they were not technically flawed and were thus as the brewer intended. My point was that doesn't mean anything in the hedonic style of rating, used at ratebeer at least. When I said subjective, I just meant personal preference, I don't mean biased by the opinions of others. In that context, objective would mean absolute comparisons against stylistic criteria. And while that's useful for homebrewers trying to hit a stylistic mark as an exercise in honing their craft, its not a useful consumer measure of good beer/bad beer.

True of course. And its happened with me. I surely didn't like the first gueuze I ever had. Hell, I didn't even like the first beer I ever had 20 some years ago. But the point of the rating sites is that its consumer oriented, not pro-taster oriented. Yes, there are people there who have not learned to appreciate some styles, and maybe never will. That doesn't mean their opinions aren't worth being considered. Maybe their opinion isn't relevant to me, because i've long since learned to love all beer styles (except the light lagers and malt liquors which I don't believe have any redeeming qualities, and to be fair I've never had faro and gose).

But the point is of course that if 100 people have rated Cantillon gueuze and 15 of them can't stand the sourness and rate it low, 15 rate it as average, and 70 rate it as being superb, then that's a good enough sample for me to consider to be worth checking out. The minority opinion doesn't discredit the process, it simply reflects the stratification of beer preferences of the particular population that inhabits such sites. No one is trying to be authoritative on sites such as ratebeer (or at least they shouldn't be).

If I was that poster that misreresents my position. Objective ratings have so many inherent issues that they are, at best, difficult to use meaningfully.

Complete subjectivity isn't useful, either. Unless/until you find enough people who have very similar tastes to yours, you'll never know whether good or bad mean the same thing to you as it does to others. Even then, you'll still hit the beers that you enjoy and those others may not. Now if you could limit the ratings at those sites to a subset of users selected by you, the ratings would be much more useful.